1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inkjet printing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an inkjet printing apparatus, since an image is formed by ejecting liquid ink, a fine ink mist is sometimes produced together with ink droplets when ejecting ink from an ejection port. In particular, countermeasures become important when printing from many ejection ports at a high driving frequency, since the amount of ink mist produced increases. In some cases, some of the produced ink mist is swept up by rising air currents heading toward the print head faces which are produced between print heads and printing medium, and adhere to the print head faces. When ejecting ink from many ejection ports at a high driving frequency, such rising air currents heading toward the print head faces are produced between print heads and printing medium by the flight of the ejected ink droplets themselves. There has been a problem in that large amounts of ink mist adhering or accumulating near the ejection ports in this way leads to ejection malfunctions, and lowers the reliability of the print heads.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-315226 discloses a configuration that provides a projection projecting toward the printing medium at the rear end of the print head faces in the carriage moving direction and modifies the trajectory of ink mist in order to suppress the adherence of ink mist onto the faces of print heads.
However, since the configuration disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-315226 does not suppress the production of rising air currents heading toward the faces of the print heads, the adherence of ink mist onto the print head faces cannot be sufficiently reduced.